Wednesday, September 07, 2011

KMT municipal chiefs rank poorly

‘COMMONWEALTH SURVEY’:Hualien County’s Fu Kun-chi, who ran as an independent, topped the poll, while Taipei City’s Hau Lung-bin was among the bottom five
 
By Mo Yan-chih  /  Staff Reporter

A survey on the approval ratings of 22 municipality heads showed Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials lagging behind their Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) counterparts.

The survey by the Chinese-language CommonWealth magazine, which was released yesterday, showed that municipalities run by KMT members ranked at the bottom of the survey. All of the six DPP local government heads ranked among the top 10.

KMT administrators who control the major traditional pan-blue strongholds — Taoyuan County Commissioner John Wu (吳志揚), the son of former KMT chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄), Greater Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強), Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) and Keelung Mayor Chang Tong-rong (張通榮) — ranked in the bottom five, with approval ratings of below 60 percent.

Topping the survey were Hualien County Commissioner Fu Kun-chi (傅崑萁), a former KMT member who ran as an independent in the last election in 2009, with an approval rating of 76.3 percent, followed by Pingtung County Commissioner Tsao Chi-hung (曹啟鴻) of the DPP with 74.3 percent and Greater Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德) of the DPP with 74.1 percent.

Chiayi County Commissioner Helen Chang (張花冠) of the DPP and Changhua County Commissioner Cho Po-yuan (卓伯源) of the KMT rounded up the top five.

Greater Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) fell to 10th place from among the top three last year.

The magazine said the survey showed that the public’s focus was shifting to local administrators’ performance, rather than an individual’s popularity.

KMT spokesperson Lai Su-ju (賴素如) said all local KMT officials worked hard to make their municipalities better, adding that the party would ask these local administrators to strengthen their performance.
 
Hau said he humbly accepted the results and would examine the performance of his team and his government would step up efforts to improve its performance. However, he said Taipei received top scores in another survey measuring the level of happiness among city and county residents, he said.

The DPP said it was happy to see all six of its mayors and commissioners finish in the top 10.

DPP spokesperson Kang Yu-cheng (康裕成) said the KMT’s poor local governance would undermine its quest to retain power in the presidential election in January.

The poll showed that the KMT was not ready as it had claimed before the 2008 presidential election, while the DPP is ready to return to power, said Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲), another DPP spokesman.

Additional reporting by Chris Wang